


The Girl Speaks

by FuzzyBlueStockings



Category: Sullivan's Travels
Genre: Acting, Alternative Perspective, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Comedy, Connecticut - Freeform, Drama, F/M, Feminist Themes, Films, Golden Age Hollywood, Great Depression, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Marriage, Post-Canon, Poverty, Pre-Canon, Red Scare, Romantic Comedy, Screwball, Social Commentary, Step-parents, Trocadero, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 20:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7984327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuzzyBlueStockings/pseuds/FuzzyBlueStockings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Girl" is also a person, she would like you to know. In an interview, the widow of John L. Sullivan tells us about her life, her husband, and her experiences in Hollywood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl Speaks

He was carrying me up the stairs. I remember thinking out loud that I ought to stop calling him Sully at this point. “After all, it’s a little silly to be on a last-name basis with your husband, don’t you think?”

And he said, “Nah, keep it if you want to. That way I’ll never have to worry about getting a Dear John letter.”

Then, I think, I grabbed his hair and mussed it up a little. I mean, what a fool. An adorable fool, until the day he died.

The papers got it almost right. We had one of them framed above our bed. “SULLIVAN GETS HIS HOLLYWOOD ENDING, GETS THE GIRL.” Which makes for a nice story, doesn’t it? And what came after that Hollywood ending was, with all its ups and downs, pretty happy, I’d say. As happy as most people have any right to expect in this “cockeyed caravan.” That's what Sully used to call it. A pretty spot-on description of life, don’t you think? He could be a wise little fool, too.

But this “girl” business, it always bothered me. As if after all Sully and I went through together I was nothing but a trophy awarded to him at the end. You call me a trophy wife and you might as well call the Taj Mahal a tarpaper shack. Oh, I know that he has the better story as far as the papers are concerned. I wound up having a decent enough career in pictures—they still show _Antebellum Belle_ on television now and then—but very short. Nothing that the press agents would think to call “legendary,” as they’re so fond of doing these days. My husband, he was the legend. I’m well aware of that. But I think when all is said and done I was more than a footnote to it.

To his credit, Sully did, too. Don’t get me wrong, there were times where he could be a real fathead, especially when the press got their hands on him. But whenever one of those vultures thought to ask, “How’s the Girl?” he would always reply:

“Oh, _Evelyn_? She’s swell. I’ll let her know you asked.”

I didn’t imagine it: He always made sure to say “Evelyn,” and he put an extra emphasis on it so the reporter would get the message.

Oh, yes: That’s my name, in case you folks didn’t know it by now. One director even wanted to bill me as “the Girl,” but I wouldn’t let him. There’s always a girl in the picture, I said. Call me by name.

 

* * *

 

Let’s see. We were lying in a drafty room in one of those old poorhouses. I forget where. It was stuffed to the brim with tramps, drunks, head-cases, and every other kind of down-and-out fellow you can think of. There were so many different ways to land yourself in a place like that, I was quickly learning. Though the way I’d done it—you know, tagging along with a pampered movie director interested in the exotic mysteries of poverty—to me, that still takes the cake. So, to pass the time, and I think also because I'd screwed my hungry mouth shut, Sully began telling me stories about himself. He got to talking about the pranks he and his school buddies used to play—something about getting a seltzer bottle down the headmaster’s trousers—and then one of the tramps next to us gestured toward another and said:

“Get a load of this guy. Boarding school, yet!”

And the other one said, “How do you like that?” before turning to me. “Bet you thought you hit the jackpot, hey girlie? You sure got gipped.” And knocked me on the shoulder.

Sully didn’t like that. No, sir! He glared at them and then he put his arm around me. Protectively, as if it weren’t obvious that he was the one more in need of protection.

“Sorry, kid. I guess this isn’t doing you any good.”

He probably thought all this talk was making me sore at him again. Like when I pushed him into his swimming pool after I found out he wasn’t actually a bum. But no. Not this time. We had more in common than he knew—at least for a little while.

I was once destined for boarding school too, you see. I was to attend Miss Porter’s. In fact, I remember standing with my mother in a crisp new sailor suit as she bragged about it to one of our neighbors. Oh, what a bunch of heels we were! But that was before the crash, of course. And Father’s stroke. And losing the house. The dogs. And everything else.

I don’t mean to make this a sob story. We made out all right. I switched to public school and took a part-time job, but mother fixed it so I didn’t have to drop out. We roomed in a house in Bridgeport. Our landlady was an old Italian widow named Panetti who grew figs in her backyard. We scrubbed the floors in exchange for $15 off the rent. But we didn’t starve.

When I told Mother I was heading out West, she was not happy. She looked as if 1929 were happening all over again. She had recently remarried and accused me of doing this to get back at her. Which wasn’t true. Frank was a little scruffy, but he was a nice enough fellow. And though my feelings about him hardly rose above indifference at that point, I could tell he loved Mother. He was the reason I left, sure, but not for the reasons she thought. I knew he would take care of her. Now I didn’t have to worry.

Actually, Frank did a very sweet thing just before I left. When Mother wasn’t looking—we still weren’t on speaking terms—he shyly passed a small box across the table. Inside there was a silver filigree hair comb studded with diamond chips. A dandy little thing. It bowled me over, really. Even in our fat years, I never had anything like it. “Wear it when you get your break, willya?” he said. “I don’t know, but it'd give me a thrill to see it glitterin’ up there with you on the screen. I sure do love them picture shows.”

 

* * *

 

Funny, you’d think with all those hard knocks I wouldn’t have been as naïve as I was when I stepped off that train in ’36. But I tell you, little Esther Blodgett was an old pro compared to me. I moved into a rooming house on Vermont Avenue; it had leaky pipes and faded fleur-de-lis wallpaper. I enrolled in acting classes. Dance classes. Voice lessons. Before long, I knew all the secretaries at Central Casting by name. I even tried to play the society angle, sneaking into the Trocadero and passing myself off as Evelyn Beale of the Bridgeport Beales as I fiddled with my cocktail-length cigarette holder. No one was buying it, of course. No one even wanted to give me a light. But I didn’t care. It was only a matter of time, I thought.

I kept writing to Mother, who hadn’t yet made her peace with my chosen profession. She kept acting like I’d become a painted lady. Little did I know how many people looked at actresses that way. There’s an invisible layer of slime covering a lot of that tinsel, let me tell you. There were men who thought the world was their casting couch.

I passed off “Mr. Smearcase” to Sully as a joke when we met. “Mr. Smearcase, that’s my knee!” I said, feigning shock at the advances of this supposedly hypothetical director.

Oh, if it were only that. A shy little grazing of the knee. Not the, uh—oh, how should I put this? Not the drink spiked with lord-knows-what, the torn dress, the bruises. That awful clammy feeling on your skin that a hundred hot showers can’t wash away…

I mean, I had come to his office knowing he might try to get fresh, but I thought I could fend him off. Distract him by talking about my credits. Maybe even do a recitation if he tried to kiss me. This was as big a chance as I’d gotten in a year. Oh, listen, I know what an idiot I was, but please don’t laugh!

I put up a good fight and escaped with my virtue intact, thank you. But before I left, the guy grabbed my arm and said:

“So you think you’re above this, do you? Above every other girl who wants to get into pictures? Well, get this into your head: You’re just a little blonde whore. That’s what any decent person would think of you, and whether or not you go for me they’ll keep thinking it. Understand?”

As you might have gathered, his name wasn’t really Mr. Smearcase. In fact, you’ve probably heard of him. But I’m not telling you who he was. He’s got children and grandchildren who are still around. I don’t owe him anything, and I can’t blame myself for wishing him dead back then. But I’ve got nothing against his kids. Let them keep idolizing their papa if they still don’t know the truth. But even now, whenever I hear some old blowhard call something he made a “family values” picture—brother, I head straight for the powder room. Can’t stand that.

On the way home, I stopped by an all-night drugstore and cleaned myself up. Stitched up the rips in my dress—it couldn’t be worn again after this, but I fixed it at least so that when I came back there were no questions from the desk manager. I had these dark rivers of mascara running down my face. Wiped them off. Powdered the black and blue spots away. I did a bang-up job, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I think I could have been a pretty good makeup artist if I’d put my mind to it.

But you know what? The next day, I went straight back to Central Casting. I wanted this more than I realized.

 

* * *

 

Of course, even the best “can-do” spirit will only get you so far. I sure found that out. Letting my bob grow out got me my foot in the door for glamour-girl parts, but I never got much further. My one stroke of luck was a job posing for an ad for the Stay-Strait Girdle Company. I’m told my torso made it onto half the billboards in the state. But after that, nothing. I pawned the hair comb. Started eating Saltines for meals. Cut hair and waited on tables. It wasn’t enough.

The last straw, actually, it was kind of silly. It seemed like every woman in this town except for Kay Francis was a blonde, and in case you haven’t put two and two together not half of them were born that way. At that point just about the only reputation I’d earned for myself was for doing hair—mine and whoever could pay me. So one day, Kitty, she was this big, pucker-faced girl across the hall, she banged on my door and asked for my peroxide. Demanded it, really. But I didn’t have any, because I was natural. I mean, look at me. Look at the Beale family tree and you’ll see a long line of towheads. But she didn’t believe it. Kept insisting. And because she was blocking my door, I pushed her out.

Well, did she get steamed! She started pulling at my hair—she must’ve thought it was a wig that would pop off and reveal me to the world. I slapped her face, then gave her a couple of good, hard slugs. We were at each other’s throats when we tripped over the edge of the staircase. Down we went, tumbling and grabbing and pulling and screeching like alley cats. The desk manager watched us without a word—I suspect he was having a jolly good time. You know, the way men do. But then a smart-looking older couple escorted their daughter into the lobby. They went in, took one look at us scuffling on the floor, and left. Their wide-eyed little darling put a hand to her mouth and then scuttled along after them. A potential new tenant lost. Couldn’t have that. Out we went, the both of us.

He locked me out of my room, but it didn’t much matter. There was nothing in there you could call valuable. There was no point in trying to find another place. I was through.

Now, I had enough money to last me a few days for food, but not enough for a train ticket. What the heck, I thought, I’ll just hitch. If anybody tries anything, well, they can’t be any worse the Smearcases of the world.

Oh, who am I kidding? I didn’t really think that. I was terrified. But I knew if I were to survive and make it home, I needed to hide it.

Stepped into an owl wagon just off Sunset, thinking this was the pits. And then I saw Sully. Tattered, damp clothes, digging a hole through his pockets for enough change to buy coffee and a sinker. Literally all wet. Pathetic.

And yet something about this tramp didn’t look like the genuine article. He was a little too well put-together. This isn’t me being fooled by hindsight or anything—I really did think that. But I figured anyone could go bust here. So I ordered him some ham and eggs, which I hadn’t had myself in ages. Sat down to chew the fat a little. What’s the harm?

 

* * *

 

It sure didn’t take me long to get stuck on him. I kept telling myself I ought to know better. What kind of man goes out and becomes a bum on purpose? There’s got to be something up his sleeve. I wasn’t buying this whole “making a picture about the human condition” racket. But by the time I found out he was married—it was a sham marriage in spirit, but a legal one on paper—I was already pretty far gone. I cried myself to sleep that night.

And when Sully disappeared? Oh, brother! Jones, the studio publicist, got the news that they’d found a body wearing his shoes at the morgue. It took him a full minute to work up the nerve to tell me, which made it worse than if he’d just, you know, spit it out. But I guess I knew it just from looking at his face. That seen-it-all sneer—Jonesy’s calling card—had vanished.

I spent about a week in—oh, what’s that condition where you can’t move or say anything?—Yes! Thank you. Catatonia. But I did the screen test afterward, the studio signed me on, and back to work I went. “Sully would have wanted it this way,” they told me. But I’ll be honest with you: I also wanted it that way. I’d worked so hard for nothing all those years. And I loved Hollywood, despite the rotten way it treated me. I loved it, you could say, like a kept woman loves a married man, knowing she should know better but desperately hooked on the thrill of it all. Heck, I’d almost become as much to Sully. I guess it’s in the blood.

I remember that moment. I was sitting between takes in this enormous sequined taffeta hoop skirt. The costumes for _Antebellum Belle_ , I’m telling you, they made _Gone with the Wind_ look like a picture about the Quakers. A stagehand had dropped a copy of the morning paper on the floor near me, and it said in big black letters:

“SULLIVAN’S MURDERER CONFESSES!”

The paper shook in my hands. I nearly fell to pieces. But when my eyes readjusted, there was the picture. Of Sully. Of him playing the part of his own murderer so he could tell us he was alive.

“YOW!”

That’s what they said I screamed, anyway. I don’t remember. I just remember flinging myself about 10 feet in the air and then barreling down to Mr. LeBrand’s office with the news, that giant monstrosity of a skirt swinging around me like the Liberty Bell. We all forgot ourselves and danced a great big old whooping jig together. For the most part, I consider those stuffed-shirt executives and publicity men an awful nuisance, and I hated how quickly they shoved me to the side once Sully returned. But right then, I tell you, they were the best friends I ever had.

The switchboards of Kansas City certainly lit up that night. I could barely sit still on the flight. Not only was Sully alive; he was free. He didn’t know it yet, but his wife had married his business manager the week before. He now had plenty of grounds to divorce her.

The studio men nearly had a heart attack when he said he was scrapping _O Brother, Where Art Thou?_ But that comedy he made instead, _Tales of a No-Good Do-Gooder_ , that was the one that got him the Academy Award. So they finally quit griping.

 

* * *

 

Sully—he had welts on his back for a long time. I saw them the first time he took off his shirt in front of me. He was embarrassed about it.

He said, “Well, when they call it hard labor, they aren’t kidding.” He couldn’t look at me.

That’s when I got a taste of how much he’d gone through. Whatever had happened to him in that prison camp, he couldn’t talk about it. It worried me. I remember him holding his face in his hands. I put my arms around him, you know, very gently from behind, and I kissed the topmost scar. It came up to around the base of his neck. That startled him, but then it made him relax a little.

(Gee, that’s pretty personal. Does that have to make it in? Oh. All right, then.)

I’d like to state for the record, since some of the younger people in Hollywood gave him a hard time about this, that Sully never lost his social conscience. But after all that happened I’m glad he only followed it so far. The studio, for example, they wouldn’t let the army send him overseas. He felt pretty guilty about that, but he did his bit working for the War Information office.

And of course we were both scared that his politics would land him in hot water. But he kept his head down, and that kept his name out of Red Channels. He felt ashamed about that, too, especially after seeing what happened to a lot of our friends. But honestly, I’d rather have had him feel that way than to see him end up like the guys hunted down by the Red-baiters—jobless, broke, in some cases taking to the bottle until they keeled over. You know those stories. I’m sure this part’ll upset some of our friends. But what can I say? I’m selfish. I’m glad they didn’t ruin him.

 

* * *

 

I think it was our 10th wedding anniversary. Sully was busy working on a picture—it was either _Maui Madness_ or _Tip Yer Stetson_ , I don’t remember. The fact that he seemed to have forgotten what day it was made me a little crabby, I guess. He didn’t come home ‘til 2 a.m., which I wasn’t too thrilled about, either. But just when I was about to have it out with him, he flopped onto the bed, looked up at me with those steady, tired eyes, and said:

“You checked your bureau, didn’t you?”

I hadn’t. I had little reason to since that morning. But there it was. The comb. A bit worse for wear, but nothing that a little polish couldn’t fix. All the chips were still in. Too late to wear in a movie—my career had pretty much ground to a halt years before—and too late to make old Frank proud anyway. He’d died earlier that year. But it was there just the same, and it left me a blubbering mess.

And he said, “Now you know how I felt when you gave me the Pluto watch. Happy Anniversary, Ev.”

I thought that was ridiculous. I could never understand why a grown man would be as obsessed as he was with Pluto, and it wasn’t as if the watch were hard to find. But this—I mean, I still don’t know how he tracked it down. I don’t know how he found out it existed.

Yes, I would say that was a high point in the marriage, one of many. There were the kids, the beautiful house in Encino, the trips to shooting locations, all wonderful. But there were also fights. Career jealousy, mostly on my part. Staying awake and wondering if he really was still on the set. The fact that we stayed married made us a rarity in Hollywood. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

I used to visit the grave of John Lloyd Sullivan, where the tramp is buried. You know, the one who conked him on the head and took his shoes. Sully tried to get me to stop. It was a ghoulish thing to do, he said, and if the papers found out there’d be trouble. But nobody else was going to put flowers on that grave. And though he didn’t intend for it to happen, that mean little man was in his own way responsible for the better part of my life. Sully might never have been able to get a divorce if it weren’t for him. So I would put on a veil and a pair of dark glasses and drive over to the cemetery to pay my respects.

I don’t do that anymore. Because now there are two gravestones for John L. Sullivan. The newest has an empty space on it, one that will someday bear my name.

Oh, I know. That’s no happy ending, is it? Certainly not one Sully would have used in one of his pictures. Especially after seeing how the other half lives, he wouldn’t have tolerated letting his audience down like that. But it’s the ending we all face, I guess. What matters are whatever moments of happiness you’re able grab for yourself before then. Sully had many. I sure have, too.

But if you want to go back and fix it so this story ends on a high note, the one people want to hear, I’ll understand. If I didn’t, I never would have gone to work in the movies.


End file.
